They, on the other hand, tend to have a very similar look. I have grown used to it over my years of teaching. The well-cut blond or brown hair, the smooth boyish skin, the perfect teeth (or teeth on their way to being made perfect by means of expensively glittering orthodontia). They look lush, if I may use such a term, as though great effort has rarely been required of them, as though they are used to getting what they want. I suppose they have been.

This year, as I looked over the rows of students, I saw a young Negro boy who was new to the school. Looking down the class enrollment list, I saw that he had one of those rather absurd African-inspired names. Rashid. That was it. Rashid Bryson.

He wore his hair in dreadlocks, the unattractive mass of ropy knots favored by many young Negro men these days. It is a style that looks angry to me—I see why the word dread is used. He was neatly dressed, but there was a slightly insolent air in the way his legs were spread, feet planted, on the floor. I was quite surprised to see him in my classroom.

As the only Negro member of the faculty, I have historically been called on to provide support to the Negro students here, of whom there are admittedly very few. My feelings about this are mixed. I want, always, to do what is best for the school. I am well aware of the pressures attendant on our current headmaster, Ted Fox, to create a diverse student body—one with more Negro students in particular. I am well aware that I am a beneficiary of the kinds of programs—or at least the kinds of outreach—that lead students like young Mr. Bryson to the doors of the Chelsea School. But I do not feel that it is incumbent upon me to help every young man with skin the color of mine who comes through the doors of this school. Let all be accepted on their merits, let them rise or fall as they may. That is something else I have learned from my long study of Rome. There are those who believe otherwise, but I share the view of those scholars who have argued that ancient Rome was a place of racial egalitarianism. I believe that they accepted each man on his individual merits, with little regard for the color of his skin. I am not so naive as to believe that this country’s long history of racial prejudice has been eradicated. But I do believe that those of us whom Du Bois called “the darker brothers” could profit from accepting the values that Chelsea at its best espouses. And while I see this school’s standards softening under the relentless onslaught of preferential treatment, I want to continue to uphold the values that the school’s founders held dear.